


a hard-faced kid that was new on the block

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Sex, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Geek/Jock, Homophobia, Love Poems, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mortality, Racism, School Dances, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:14:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: “Robin was your mother’s nickname for you?”
   “Yeah, didn’t you know?” Grayson’s eyebrow lifts. “That was why I was so pissed at Bruce for just giving my mother’s name to Jason like that.” You gave it to me, Damian thinks, stricken. Grayson’s smile, turned up to the rain-thick sky, gives nothing away. One part high school tropes, one part meditation on the nature of life and death, one part love letter to Dick and Damian's demons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyn/gifts).



> For the DickDami Secret Santa Fic Exchange over at Imzy (cross-posted there in its entirety). The prompt was "geek/jock."
> 
> I've diverged significantly from a traditional interpretation of that prompt after wrestling with it for a long time, but I hope you can find something here to enjoy anyway, Reyn! 
> 
> This fic certainly been a journey for me and I'm excited to share it with all of you.
> 
> Flashbacks in this fic are _(italicized and marked out with parentheses.)_ **Non-spoiler-free warnings are in the end notes of each chapter.** I also include end-notes about references in the fic to songs and poems if you want to save yourself some Googling.
> 
> The title is from ["Thinking About You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_5_4dfvjn0) by Big Scary.

The walls crumble and the ceiling falls in.

In the center of the floor is a glowing green pool, hissing and spitting as chunks of plaster splash into its depths.

It’s the last Lazarus Pit on Earth.

And Damian is going to destroy it if it’s the last thing he does.

He’d meant to be out of here by the time the building collapsed, but things had gone awry--his grandfather had been expecting him and put up a magnificent fight. Via his ninjas, of course, because God forbid the leader of the League of Assassins bloody his hands but once. Damian is determined to make it a cleaner fight than that.

Hauling himself upright, Damian throws his last knife and manages to pierce Ra’s through the shoulder. His entire body feels like a wound as he drags himself to his feet, and he can’t rest any weight on his left leg. Looking at it will only distract him, so he focuses on Ra’s instead.

“Grandfather! This is your last stand,” Damian calls, voice shaky with pain. “Any last words?”

He catches the thin edge of his grandfather’s smirk. “Run.”

Damian looks up to see the chain upholding a huge hanging brazier shiver and rattle and break--

A black-and-blue blur hurtles out of Damian’s periphery. They’re both sent crashing to the ground, safely away from the heavy clank of the metal that would have surely brained him.

“Get off of me, Grayson!” When the hell did he get here? Damian punches him solidly in the nose and Grayson grunts but clamps down tighter on him even as the blood flows onto Damian’s tunic.

When he left on his mission, Damian had scanned himself, Goliath, and all his equipment for trackers ten times over. He was going to destroy every Lazarus pit on the planet so that when Damian took the too-long life of his grandfather, he would never be able to come back again. And he didn’t need the interference of his father or his father’s lackeys.

“Your leg is mangled,” Grayson yells in his ear, trying to turn him over to access it.

“He’s getting away!” Damian gasps. He punches him again. Grayson grunts and only clings tighter, damn him. “Grayson, he’s getting away.”

Ra’s has shoved aside the rubble and is already half-out of the wrecked building.

“Let me go,” Damian sobs. His vision swims, but he can still see Ra’s disappearing beyond the plaster. “Let me go.”

Grayson lifts him into his arms and Damian hangs on for dear life, shouting as a bolt of pain shoots up his thigh. “The leg’s real bad, Damian,” he tells him, strained with his weight. He’s not the light boy he once was. “We’ve gotta go.”

“Put me down and _go after him--”_ He misses Grayson’s blank look of incomprehension until he realizes he’s descended into Arabic. “Follow him!”

“Your leg,” Grayson says again, and Damian’s about to take his head off. “I don’t think we can save your leg.”

Fear drops into his stomach. “What?”

“Might have to be amputated, Damian,” Grayson tells him. He brushes the sweaty hair out of Damian’s head as he trembles, shaking his head.

“No, no,” he gasps, trying to twist and look down at himself. His leg is a mess, bloody and raw.

Grayson’s eyes flick sideways and Damian knows exactly where he’s looking. The whole building gives another judder beneath them. “The Pit--Damian, it could save your leg.”

“No!” Damian shouts. He struggles against him, but Grayson is leaping across chunks of roof with Damian in his arms. “No, I will not let you make me into him, I will not be him, I will not be him--”

The green swallows them up and all he can hear is screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ceiling falls in on Dick and Damian and Damian sustains a serious leg injury that is described graphically. Damian punches Dick in the nose and he bleeds. Dick dips Damian in a Lazarus Pit against his will.


	2. Chapter 2

To the ends of the Earth. Australia, Iceland, Chile. Lost track in Cape Town, back on the trail in Amsterdam. Months zigzagging the map, days on end spent on planes and in airports.

_(“He’ll be back,” Bruce says briskly, not pausing in checking the contents of his belt._

_After Ra’s was confirmed alive and the report on Damian’s injury reached him, his concern for this whole mess dropped nearly to zero. Now even Dick’s news that Damian has gone missing doesn’t make him miss a step in routine._

_“And if he’s not?” Dick begins with deliberate belligerence._

_“He’ll be back,” Bruce repeats, his voice still even. Dick’s an expert at baiting Bruce, he knows how this song-and-dance goes. “If he ever wants to be Batman, he’ll have to come back.”_

_Bruce doesn’t acknowledge Damian’s ambition to his face, but Dick knows he weighs it, assesses and reassesses the issue of Damian succeeding his father whenever Batman has a serious injury or Robin a major success._

_“No offense, Bruce, but I don’t know how legacy-friendly Damian is feeling these days.” Dick crosses his arms over his chest, combative._

_Fingers on his temple, Bruce keeps running through his cowl settings in silence._

_“All I’m saying is--there’s more than one way to lose someone.”)_

And now, inward.

Damian in the heartland. It’s an odd thought.

As the plane loses height, Dick can see a patchwork of green and gold snaked through with lonely grey roads. As good a place to lose yourself as any, Dick thinks.

 _(“There’s no point, there’s no_ point,” _Damian fairly screams, and Dick, frankly, agrees._

_“You need to learn to live a normal life.” Bruce’s facade remains stony._

_“Maybe I_ can’t.” _Damian’s voice breaks._ “I’m not normal.” _He is exceptional--surpassed every goal post until the goal was_ average.

_“He’s not me,” Dick says, speaking up at last, quiet. “And even I could only take getting called gypsy so many times--”_

_Bruce stiffens._

_No, he’d never told him. Some things you don’t tell Bruce because telling Bruce doesn’t get you anything you can call a conversation and bringing it up once means never bringing it up again._

_And some things you don’t tell Bruce because you want to be brave and you want to make him proud and you can’t do that if you act like the brown boy with a bruised heart you are._

_He presses his advantage while Bruce is wrong-footed. “Pull him out.”_

_Bruce balks immediately. “You do realize that Damian legally has to attend school.”_

_“Are you telling me_ Batman _can’t make homeschooling arrangements?”)_

Damian’s flair for irony is borderline supervillainous. He’s always had a streak of that in him, in his showiness, that sharpness in his smile. Dick never exactly discouraged it.

Still, high school. 

People do fall through the cracks here, but he doesn’t know how Damian is going to navigate it when he never ended up going. 

If Dick had more warning--and he supposes the point is that he didn’t--he could have shuffled together enough sham documents to go in as a new teacher. But right now, he’s stuck passing himself off as a student.

It’s not the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done, but nothing makes him feel his age like putting on a Letterman and trying out for track again. 

Ian Bowers, A and B student, middling athlete, senior who transferred out here because his folks bought some land.

All the combing through school records hasn’t told him anything, so he’ll have to manually pick Damian out of the incoming freshmen who didn’t come from the feeder middle school.

But how, is the question? How much is Damian hiding this time, how deep does his disguise go?

Dick traveled everywhere as a kid with a circus troupe from all over and Gotham never stuck to his vocal cords. He doesn’t sound like he’s from anywhere. 

Damian’s voice is unplaceable, too. Not in a national news anchor way, though, but foreign, a little clipped British, a roll of Arabic. But Dick knows he can do spooky things with his voice; Dick doubts he’s having much more trouble than Dick disguising himself on that front. 

So catching low amusement or a thin angry thread is out.

There used to be something funny in seeing a small kid stalk so fluidly through the night, but there’s not much left to be amused at now that Damian’s shoulders have broadened and his limbs have lengthened and he walks like a big cat out for the kill.

 _(_ “--for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue-- _why are you_ laughing?”

_It was always a miscalculation to think of Damian as a child, so Dick doesn’t know why he’s caught so off-guard to find that the slim book Damian had been jealously clutching to his chest until Dick coaxed him to read to him was love poetry._

_He had supposed Damian saved such fervor for tirades against animal cruelty or rooftop skirmishes. But looking at him now, the newly-broad shoulders bowed defensively, the green eyes cat-like slits, Dick’s stomach turns over strangely._

_“And here I thought there was hope for you, philistine,” Damian says after a moment once he’s seen that Dick has sobered awkwardly. “Well. Whatever.”_

_“There is,” Dick insists, and he leans in a little, smiles before he can really think of what he’s doing. “Read me another?”_

_“So you can laugh?” Damian scoffs. His cheeks are dark red, Dick notices with a start._

_Passion is--it’s not alien to Damian._

_“No. I like your voice.”)_

Damian can hide that, too. Can slouch like a teenager, too, Dick’s seen that. 

But here’s the thing. Damian slipped out of his hospital room well before his projected recovery time. He’s acquired a limp that that didn’t stop him from outpacing Dick through rocky mountains and bustling marketplaces. Nevertheless, it is distinct.

If the hallways stop being so clogged and confused between classes once students adjust to their schedules, maybe that’ll be his giveaway in a crowd.

It’s a game Dick is well past tired of, but he’ll play it as long as he needs to for Damian to come to his senses and come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the second flashback scene, there are implications of racism against both Dick and Damian and the use of an anti-Romani slur.
> 
> The poem Damian reads to Dick is a translation of Neruda's Sonnet XI.


	3. Chapter 3

Damian would call Grayson’s determination _dogged,_ but that feels like an insult to dogs. 

His mind skips for a moment to Titus. He thinks of his serious brown eyes with a pang. Titus doesn’t know any better than Damian does when or if he’s coming back to Gotham.

_(“I think Titus is sick,” Damian tells Grayson, trying to speak fast to conceal his worry._

_“Why?” He’s gratified by how Grayson sits up on instant alert. “What’s he been doing?”_

_“I don’t know. He’s tired all the time. He doesn’t always eat.” Damian’s brow furrows and he strokes a hand down Titus’s warm back. Titus grunts, haunches shifting._

_Grayson is quiet for a moment. His fingers find the touches of silver on Titus’s smooth head. It’s clear he’s measuring his words. “I think it’s just an effect of time.”_

_Damian’s stomach churns. This is_ worse _than anything that’ll make the vet shave his fur and inject him and bandage him. Damian never wants to accept what he cannot change. “You mean he’s getting old.”)_

There he is, standing in a gaggle of cross-country runners and swimmers, listening to some musclehead talk with what could be genuine interest on his face. 

When Damian was young, he’d thought Grayson was a terrible liar. The truth was something closer to Grayson not bothering to hide what he didn’t think he had to hide. 

Years have taught him that Grayson pushed things deep and dark just as much as the rest of them did, important things, too. Grayson may have been a creature of the light, but he didn’t always live on the surface.

Loading books into his arms, he can’t help but keep watching him. There’s some joke told, and laughter ripples through the group. Grayson laughs as well. 

Damian can only count a handful of times when he has seen Grayson display discomfort. He can find a way to mold to every situation. And yet in Grayson’s adaptability, Damian finds an isolation as extensive as his father’s. If you can make a home anywhere, where is home? 

In a crowd, a profound loneliness.

He stuffs one book in his bag and tucks the other under his arm, taking a more circuitous route to avoid Grayson. He hasn’t found Damian yet and Damian’s not going to make it any easier for him.

The reason he hasn’t found Damian is because he’s masterful at disguises, obviously. Willing to make the necessary sacrifices. A _bowl cut._ Glasses he doesn’t need. Baggy clothing in layers to hide his hard-won physique. He--avoids mirrors.

He’s still working out to ensure that he doesn’t lose musculature. He doesn’t intend to regress in the rigor of training he’s kept up since he was old enough to walk, especially because he’s concerned about the atrophy of the muscle in his left leg.

 

As he sits down in the library that afternoon, he’s careful with his leg, setting his foot down and rubbing along his calf while he pulls his book out of his bag. Once he’s settled in, he sticks his earphones in his ears and flips on his hood. He hasn’t worn his Robin suit for ages, which is, of course, by his own choice. There’s something comforting in the fabric around his head, though. Blocking out the world. Putting some distance between himself and his failure.

All efforts to try to read his book fail when he sees Grayson walk into the library, whereupon he focuses more at hiding behind it. He’s tempered his usual confident stride with something more like a slouch. Damian is taken aback at how young he’s managed to make himself look. It’s still ludicrous for a full-grown man and one of the most mature adults he knows to masquerade as a senior in high school, which is why Damian backed him into this corner.

But Grayson’s always had something of youthfulness about him. At times, he seems younger than any of them.

He takes a seat across from Damian. Unavoidable. Damian wonders if Grayson is operating on instinct or the universe is just working against Damian again. Grayson smiles now at the librarian, so familiar that Damian has to look away. It’s been a while since he’s seen him smile.

Hurriedly, he buries his head in his book again. The librarian comes by testily to tell him that he can’t wear his hood indoors, as if he’s unaware of the rules and not deliberately flouting them. He glares at her and tries to go about it quietly. And he would have avoided detection if not for the betrayal of his own body

His leg seizes up and bangs against the table leg. Damian grits his teeth. He’s more of an outcast than he even intended to be. The weird foreign kid who’s also crippled. He doesn’t need to look at the librarian to know that there’s pity written all over her face. And he doesn’t need to look at Grayson to know that he’s seen Damian now.

Time to go. He slings his bag over his shoulders and stuffs his earphone cords in his hoodie pocket. He garners a few stares as he limps his way down the hall. In this school, he hasn’t been as undetectable as he wanted to be. No one’s been directly cruel, but there have been whispers, stares.

It doesn’t matter. They’re all beneath him, anyway. They’ll all be stuck in this stupid town forever and while it’s been a long time since Damian thought he could own the world, he’ll always be somebody.

“Hey! Hey, you dropped this.” Grayson’s polite voice, the one he uses on strangers.

“What?” Damian doesn’t turn around. The rudeness he uses on family.

“You dropped this,” Grayson repeats, then holds out the piece of paper Damian had been using as a bookmark.

“Ah.” He unfolds it out of habit. The creases are all worn.

_somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond_

“It’s, uh. It’s whatever,” Damian says, face burning.

“I like the poem.” Grayson tucks his hands into the pockets of his jacket and shrugs. 

_you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens_

_(“I was born on the first day of spring,” Grayson says like it’s something he’s proud of, like he could have had anything to do with the day that he was born. He’s walking on top of the stone railing in the garden, one foot in front of the other like a dancer._

_“Tt.” Damian goes back to sketching the heavy rose bobbing with dewdrops._

_“It was why my mom used to call me ‘Robin,’” Grayson explains as he sits down beside Damian uninvited._

_Damian’s charcoal stills. “Robin was your mother’s nickname for you?”_

_“Yeah, didn’t you know?” Grayson’s eyebrow lifts. “That was why I was so pissed at Bruce for just giving my mother’s name to Jason like that.”_

__You gave it to me, _Damian thinks, stricken. Grayson’s smile, turned up to the rain-thick sky, gives nothing away.)_

“My name’s Ian,” Grayson tells him, offering him a hand to shake. Like that’s something high schoolers do.

Damian hesitates. Embarrassed. “Thomas,” he mumbles back. Thomas Kane. His grandparents’ names. He tells himself he couldn’t pick anything better because of impatience.

“Cool. Well, I’ve gotta get to class, so I’ll see you around,” Grayson tells him infuriatingly. As though his only reason for being here isn’t tracking Damian down and making his life hell.

He watches him walk away and hates him a little bit, but not as much as he hates himself.

 

“Do you think he’s, like, gay?” The voice is one of hushed incrimination. One of the many girls who flit around Grayson; Damian doesn’t care enough to remember her name. She’s being laughably unsubtle, her eyes flicking to Damian from behind her locker door. 

“Why, do you like him?” Grayson raises his eyebrows at the girl.

“Uh, no,” she scoffs, hesitating. “I just think he seems like it or whatever, you know?”

“I don’t know,” Grayson says, sounding bemused. “You don’t have a problem with it or anything, do you?” Just like that, he slides the conversation around again on her.

The girl forces a quick laugh. “Ha, no, of course not.”

Slamming his locker closed, Damian startles her into a little cringe before she walks away hurriedly, mumbling something about her next class.

Grayson doesn’t follow.

Damian stalks past in the opposite direction, looking down, face hot, head dizzy. 

He can only think of Grayson’s easy stance and hard eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a mention of Titus aging. Damian's injury plays up and bothers him and ableism is implied. At the end of the chapter, there is an instance of non-violent homophobia towards Damian.
> 
> The poem Damian was using as a bookmark is "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond" by ee cummings.


	4. Chapter 4

“Mr. Kane, if you’d like to put your answer on the board…” Dick’s new calculus teacher--he’d switched periods to Damian’s--adjusts her glasses. 

Dick’s incensed on Damian’s behalf. He watches him move to the front with difficulty but with chin lifted high. This would be easier with something to lean on for support. When has Damian ever wanted it easy, though? And his pride wouldn’t suffer the blow of using a cane.

More than that, though, the lurch in his belly is guilt. He watches Damian fill the chalkboard with a rapid hand and tries not to stare at the leg concealed under his secondhand jeans. 

It’s his fault. His fault for not getting there sooner. His fault for dipping him in the Lazarus pit, a violation outright. His fault for not being able to keep him in the healing fluid for sufficient time for him to heal. And his fault for not stopping Damian from running in the first place.

Damian’s voice draws him back into the classroom and away from that dark room glowing green. 

Chin in palm, Damian is saying something about _a figure that has finite volume but infinite surface area._ He’s never heard anyone sound so fond of Gabriel’s horn.

_(“What’s your favorite subject?” he asks Damian, sitting on the edge of his bed with hands behind himself for balance. It’s a banal question, he thinks._

_Damian doesn’t answer for a long time._ “Favorite?” _he repeats like it’s a foreign concept._

_“What subject do you like best?” Dick prompts again._

_“I found sword-fighting to be very useful. Not strictly for its own sake but also for the balance that can be lent to other kinds of combat.” Damian turns suddenly, a shining blade whirling in his hand. Doesn’t matter how many Bruce confiscates, he always seems to have more hidden away._

_Dick intended to ask more about school subjects, but in Damian’s_ atypical _education, that had been a school subject, after all. And_ most useful _isn’t the same as_ favorite, _either. “What about science or literature, stuff like that?”_

_Metal reflects in his eyes for a silvery second before he sheathes the sword. “I like math,” he says with a kind of indifference. “There's always an answer.”)_

Dick works his problem set in silence for the last fifteen minutes of class. He goes back over the first ten problems, misses two of them deliberately, rubbing his temple with his fingertips. It’s much easier than he remembers his own math classes being.  


The teachers here are evidently trying, but the curriculum isn’t the best, the funding nonexistent for everything but the football team. When he gets back to Gotham and Dick Grayson, oldest heir to the Wayne fortunes, he’ll make a generous anonymous donation.

Damian, diagonally ahead of him, is working with his head lying on a curled arm. His tender brown nape and scarred knuckles mesmerize Dick. He’s using his right hand--yet another change. Dick doesn’t know how he keeps it all in his head. Damian’s naturally left-handed, trained to be effectively ambidextrous. Remarkable in so many ways. 

How much of it is innate, he wonders, and how much is whatever runs through Bruce and Talia that makes them the masterpieces of human ability they are? Would Damian be the same boy had Talia chosen a different father for him? Would Damian be the same boy had he not been abused and adulated and neglected and coddled in the name of making him great? 

Their whole family has been through hell and back in their own ways, but Damian has filed away his trauma as _training._

_(“What are you playing?”_

_The cognitive benefits and hand-eye coordination that come with playing an instrument must be why, Dick supposes, Talia found it suitable for the heir to an assassin empire to learn the violin._

_“You wouldn’t know it,” Damian says in dismissal. There’s something too hasty to it. Heat in his cheeks._

_“You could tell me, anyway.” Dick closes his eyes for a moment and feels the music leap over to him._

_It calls to him in shadows and then soars to a shimmering crescendo. Breaks up into playful zigzag before it descends into the black again._

_“Or--are you composing?”_

_The bow pauses and Damian scrubs back over the last part, irritation clear. A put-upon sigh._

_“It’s called_ Batman and Robin.” _)_

“You wanna work together?” Dick asks Damian as soon as their next period teacher announces a paired essay. One, because of course he wants to work with Damian. Two, because this whole charade is weird enough without him getting invited to some seventeen year old’s house to work on a Google doc.

Damian’s lip curls a little. He gives an abrupt nod. Less protest than Dick expected. He might see the wisdom of it, too.

One of Dick’s new--nominal--friends high-fives him. “Nice, working with the smart kid,” he tells him smirkingly.

“Strategy, I keep telling you,” Dick says like it’s all conspiracy, turning a shrug on Damian.

“Whatever. Can we just get started?” The bell rings before they can do much, so they agree they’ll meet in the school’s computer lab after the final bell.

 

The computers in here have to be half as old as Damian. . Dick even feels like grumbling about the indignity of using Internet Explorer. They set up on computers next to each other, though Damian has a second where he looks like he’s going to sit across from Dick instead.

Playing to type some, Dick goofs off in between throwing links up to look at later for research purposes. Damian’s taking this more seriously than necessary, tapping away with a glare that should burn a hole in the screen.

“You know whatever grade we get on this doesn’t actually matter, right?” Dick rests his elbow close to Damian’s and raises his eyebrows at him.

“Hm.” Damian doesn’t answer right away. “I have to do something to keep my sanity--Ian.” There was a moment’s hesitation, Damian’s lips halfway to a ‘G.’ Soft lips, full. Looking at that mouth, no one would know how sharp it could be.

Looking back at his screen, Grayson reads a couple of unexpectedly eloquent and impassioned sentences. His mouth hangs open some. “Is this what you write when you don’t mean it?” His knee brushes Damian’s hand. 

Damian’s fingers twitch and he yanks his hand back to his lap. “Who says I don’t mean it?”

“You think society relies too much on technology and millennials have lost touch with everything that matters?” Dick’s lips twitch.

“You don’t know me,” Damian says brusquely, and despite the deception of it all, that stings some anyway. Dick’s eyes move down to the keyboard and Damian shifts beside him. Like Bruce used to do with Matches Malone, a roll of the shoulders and Damian’s suddenly himself again, bowl cut and all. “I’m a better liar than you.” It’s flavored like an apology.

Dick’s the one who should be apologizing to Damian. For so many things. For missing so much when he prided himself on knowing him best. “That’s not hard,” Dick retorts. But he hungers for honesty amid all the layers of lies. “You’re better than me at a lot of things.” He swallows. Jerks his chin at the screen and brings them back to something concrete. “Like writing.”

Not even a beat. “What you find exceptional in me is mostly a result of your own deficiencies,” Damian drawls. 

It’s such a Damian line that Dick barks a laugh. “You’re welcome,” he manages when he’s got his breath back. His heart feels big and warm in his chest.

Looking at him like he’s grown a second head, Damian shakes his hand and subsumes himself in the essay again. 

Nevertheless, Dick doesn’t think he imagines the smile touching the corners of his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are implications of ableism against Damian in the first scene. References to Damian's canonically abusive childhood are made.
> 
> Gabriel's horn is a sick math thing that blows my mind and you should totally look up.


	5. Chapter 5

Like Damian, Dick has to do something to keep himself sane. For him, that’s working out early in the mornings before the other athletes. He has no great love for being up with the sun. 

That’s more Damian, who meditates and does yoga at dawn whenever his night hasn’t been too long, saving the afternoon for sleeping.

So it figures he’d choose this time to confront him. 

Dick’s only just set down his bag when Damian barges into the locker room. 

“Grayson,” he half-shouts, echoing off the walls before he remembers that although the place is deserted, they’re still on very much public property. “This ends now!”

There go those supervillain tendencies again. Grinning, Dick turns around and leans back against the lockers, one foot drawn up and hands in his pockets. “Hey, you brought us here.”

“Because I am trying to get you to stop following me, if you had not noticed,” Damian says through gritted teeth, marching up to him. He’s all himself now, no hint of Thomas Kane’s slouch about him, though he’s in costume. He’s wearing a shapeless grey sweatshirt over a faded t-shirt and beat-up jeans that fit wrong everywhere. His loveliness pierces Dick clean through.

“Really? I had no idea you were trying to shake me off your trail.” Dick smiles because he knows how much it gets under Damian’s skin. All his frustration that he’d never catch up to Damian feels distant now that he’s closer than he’s been in months. 

Taking him by the shoulders, Damian shakes him back and forth. “I have a mission,” he hisses. “I may have experienced a minor setback--” Dick keeps his eyes off the leg. “--but I intend to find my grandfather and finish what I started.”

“You need PT,” Dick says, gentle, not too gentle. “I know I fucked up, Damian, but don’t let me be what keeps you away from home.”

Damian’s expression contorts. His fists grip Dick’s shirt harder. “Must you be so self-aggrandizing? It’s not about you. It’s about my family.” He wets his lips swiftly. “My blood family,” he corrects. A kindness Damian at ten would have never stopped to offer. He’s changed, he’s changed, and Dick understands how bad he wants to buck his past.

“But seriously, don’t take it out on your leg,” he says anyway. “Let me--” He stoops and puts a hand on his calf, squeezes the tense knot of it for a moment.

Stiffening, Damian shoves him away. Dick catches himself on the low wooden bench behind himself, breathing coming fast from frustration. “I’m sorry,” he pleads with Damian. “I’m sorry for what happened that night. I didn’t come there to stop you.”

“What?” Damian’s eyes widen and some of the fight flees his form. “Why were you there, then?”

And now here’s a balancing act as tricky as any Dick’s tried. He went because he was worried about Damian. “I was scared.”

That admission of vulnerability makes Damian frown, disarmed. He shifts his weight and looks away from Dick. “I had it handled.” His hands uncurl from their fists and drop down to graze Dick’s chest.

“Until the roof caved in,” Dick says, pushing his luck some. He leans away from the wall and into him.

Damian’s eyes lock with his again and longing branches up the inside of his ribs. The accustomed uncertainty of wanting a man. Knowing all the signs are there, not knowing if he feels them, too.

_(“Alfred,” Dick says, then stops. He knows on instinct, no matter how much he loves Bruce, this isn’t something he’s going to ask him. But he’s not sure about asking Alfred, either._

_“Yes, dear boy?” Alfred looks up from dusting off some of the trinkets Bruce and Dick have acquired together this past year._

_“I got called a fairy today.” He looks down at his scabbed knees as he swings his legs. “Is it because of my boots?” he guesses._

_“Ah.” Alfred’s duster slows as he considers his choice of words. “It is a derogatory term for men who love other men.”_

_“Oh.” Dick feels suddenly small. Feels afraid of how he’s wanted to hold some boys’ hands just as much as he’s wanted to hold girls’._

_Then he remembers the contortionist couple from the circus with rings on their hands who made the best walnut and raisin cake, and he realizes Alfred didn’t say loving men was a_ bad _thing._

_He looks up, eyes big and unsure._

_“Please remember this, Master Dick.” Alfred passes him his forgotten cup of tea with a brief squeeze of his fingers around Dick’s. “That word says more about those who choose to utter it than those who must hear it used against them.”)_

“Go home, Grayson,” Damian spits.

And kisses him.

Dick gasps against his mouth and Damian _bites,_ making him melt. It’s nothing like forgiveness. Nothing’s ever felt like this. 

Grabbing for him, he softens their kiss until their mouths move together, slow and warm and needy. “Damian, are you sure,” he says between their mouths, because being Dick Grayson is an exercise of shooting yourself in the foot, repeatedly.

“When have I ever been unsure of anything?” Damian demands, and his eyes are so full of _acid_ at the accusation that Dick puffs a laugh and pulls him in again.

It’s cold in the locker room and if he had to choose the place, it would be far away from here that he takes Damian into his arms for the first time. 

But if knowing Damian has taught him anything, it’s that inauspicious beginnings don’t mean much. Dick was at the bottom of the well when he made Damian his partner, and they climbed to the light together. He’s watched him grow up from an impossible boy into a difficult man.

Still--”We could have done this in _Paris,_ Damian,” he admonishes playfully. His fingers stroke the bristly track of hair at the back of his neck.

Forehead against his, lips turned down, Damian makes an unhappy sound. “You’re not even letting me do it now,” he complains. “I would have preferred Istanbul,” he amends, just to be contrary, which is just about how Dick loves him best.

“Oh, you wanna do it?” Dick’s laughing at the situation, at himself. Laughing into their kiss, open-mouthed and longing, making aching breath still in his throat.

Damian’s glasses fog and Dick snorts again. Pulling them gingerly off his face, he folds them and slides them into Damian’s collar. He traces down his Adam’s apple and follows the path of his fingertips with his mouth, and Damian’s restrained noise lights him up inside.

Bunching his hands in Damian’s sweatshirt, he falls untidily to one knee, back to the lockers, and mouths at the skin marked with old wounds velvety and puckered-rough in turns against his tongue. Scratchy hair trailing deliciously down into his boxers.

Damian’s browner than his fingers when he puts his hand up to his belly and feels him breathe, brown he can’t hide where Dick can pass for tan if you’re white and blind.

He can't hide.

Damian’s knee buckles and Dick clutches his thigh to hold him up.

“This is stupid,” Damian hisses, and for a second when Damian seizes him, he thinks he’s about to get a beating. Then Damian’s throwing him down on the bench and straddling him, strong thighs pinning Dick’s. Thick muscle, power, everything Dick likes. “You’re stupid.”

Seems like a hell of thing to be saying when Damian’s undoing both their jeans with those hands that can do so much, but Dick’ll take it if it means Damian on top of him.

Damian closes his hand around their cocks and the friction sizzles up his spine. Firm searing line of heat and weight against the length of himself. Dick thinks he could die here looking up at Damian as he throws back his head and flexes his hips. 

Licking his hand, he shoves it down between Damian’s fingers and makes everything wetter and quicker. Their fingers tangle and they jerk each other in staccato. “Damian,” he says, and his name again and again, the only word he remembers, a whine he’s never made before beating its way out of his chest. 

The bench thumps under them. They sound slick together, no way to deny what they’re doing. 

A furrow works its way down between Damian’s brows like a trickle of water and white teeth snag the swell of his bottom lip. Long lashes cast feathery shadows on his cheek. His eyes flick open. “Dick.”

Dick’s hips jack-knife. He _drips_ for him, making Damian’s eyes grow even sharper. “Say it again,” he pleads.

“Dick.” His lips point up at the edges, a conqueror’s smirk. “You’re so easy.” In Damian’s voice now, smoke and honey, it’s anything but an insult.

 _“Need_ you,” Dick tells him without shame. There’s no room for shame when they’re so close. “Take me like you want.”

Maybe that’s what Damian was waiting to hear. Raking Dick’s t-shirt out of the way, he rubs down against his nipple with his thumb. Thumb of the other hand circles the sensitive tip of his cock and teases the slit with the nail until he wants to scream.

Damian scores pink down his ribs as though he’s counting them, squeezes his side with bruising intent, and Dick arches into him for more as much as he can with his jacket trapped under him.

Calculating, in control, eyes swallowed by pupil as he grinds down into him.

At least until Damian’s leg spasms against Dick’s hip. It paralyzes him. Humiliation is written all over his beautiful face and Dick can’t take it. “Don’t,” he whispers. “Don’t, baby.”

A sob chokes Damian and Dick pulls so their chests crush together. Pressing his forehead to Damian, he shakes his head against him. “You feel amazing. You’re gonna make me come.” 

Tilting his head, Damian pauses and then trusts him enough to kiss him again. Kisses him as they come apart together.

Dick hooks a hand around Damian’s back over his sweatshirt as Damian rocks down against him. Somewhere under his hand is the wound that took Damian away from him. His fingers curl in closer. 

Bracing his feet, Dick thrusts up as best as he can. “Wanna make you feel how you make me feel.”

Damian keens against his mouth, cock twitching as he chases his climax. “You _do.”_ And he shows him he does. With a bitten-off moan, he spills slippery heat between them. 

Damian’s mouth on his so soft murmuring his name and hand on his hip so tight leaving his mark. Dick tugs _harder faster_ and almost blacks out as he comes.

The world is a glossy smear when he comes back to himself again. His mouth tastes marine from Damian’s tears. Sweat pastes their skin together. 

He brushes back a strand of Damian’s hair that sticks up funny with his clean hand and nothing else could matter but how Damian’s eyes open to him.

 _(“I was thinking about something B said to me once.” Dick’s hunkering down on a skyscraper roof, hands grasping the edge between his feet. “He said_ ‘Family is the only definition of forever that has any meaning.’” __

_Damian’s suit is the darkest Robin has ever been, the red like old blood and the green like pine. He moves like a slice of the night as he comes to stand at Dick’s shoulder. “That sounds like something my grandfather would say,” he says with an air of more than distaste,_ distrust. 

_“It’s not about an obsession with continuing your bloodline, though,” Dick argues for the sake of arguing. It’s a conversation they’ve been having in fits and while they’re on this age-long stakeout, he might as well try to push to a conclusion. “It’s about wanting to leave something behind that’s bigger than yourself.”_

_“For whom? The world will forget everyone eventually.” Damian’s disparaging, as Dick knew he would be._

_“For the people you love.” Dick looks up at his profile. It’s a funhouse mirror of Bruce’s, matching his jaw but not his nose, forehead but not his cheekbones._

_“My grandfather’s quest for longevity only demonstrates its pointlessness.” Damian seems to be carrying on another conversation entirely. Captivated anyway, Dick doesn’t look away. “All that matters is being here right now and doing what’s right.”_

_“After we die, is there--nothing?” Damian knows, he’s been there, they lost him. It’s a thought he doesn’t like to think often. It feels an even more essential failure on his part than losing Bruce did._

_Like Bruce, Damian is a fulcrum Dick’s life turns around no matter how far he goes._

_There could be nothing more important than this, listening to Damian’s mind and heart while rain speckles down on their suits, Gotham’s muffled roar under his feet._

_Right now, he thinks, there’s nothing he couldn’t tell him._

_A siren cuts across his thoughts and they only have to exchange one glance before they’re withdrawing their grappling hooks in unison._

_Poised on the brink of flight, Damian tells him, “There’s nothing like this.”)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content. Damian shoves and shakes Dick, but there is no further violence and Dick is not injured. Damian is of age. The sex is somewhat rough, but consent is enthusiastic. Damian's injury plays up again. In a flashback scene, there is homophobia against a young Dick where he was called a slur. There are mentions of racism. This chapter references Damian's canonical death and generally discusses death.


	6. Chapter 6

What drew Damian here, he couldn’t say. He hopes someday he’ll be able to claim something less banal than curiosity.

Standing with his back to the wall, Damian crosses his arms over his chest and aims scorn at the balloon lettering, the glitter on the floor, the snack table with plastic bowls cut to masquerade as glass.

Abysmal.

He almost wishes he’d run for student council to avert some of this abomination that they call Homecoming. He’s about ready to leave when he sees Grayson.

His suit is just as cheap as Damian’s or anyone else’s here, but he wears it like it’s tailored for him. Hyacinth boutonniere. Playing with his cuffs, Grayson shakes his head at a couple of idiots with buzzcuts who seem to be trying to coax him to dance. 

Damian can’t see a girl anywhere near him. He’s come stag. Damian wonders for a bitter moment whether there are really no redheads at this school.

The song shifts and so does Grayson’s expression. It’s a ridiculous song, Damian’s ashamed of even recognizing it.

“You can’t sit out the Cupid shuffle,” someone’s insisting to Grayson, and Damian rolls his eyes. Of course he can. 

Grayson’s _grinning_ and bouncing back on a heel and oh, no, he won’t, will he?

He will.

Damian burns with secondhand embarrassment and stares at the ceiling. That lasts all of a minute before he drops his chin and peers through the thick of the crowd at him.

There’s no real charm in any of this. White people without a sense of rhythm sidestepping and then wandering aimlessly. 

But Grayson’s eyes are so blue against golden skin and crinkled at the corners, his movements fluid as always. He’s letting go too much. Giving away that he’s not somebody whose only talent is pounding down a track. Grayson swings his hips and lifts his arms and loses himself in it.

And Damian--can’t begrudge him that.

The music winds down and Grayson can’t be winded, fakes it for the others. Takes a swallow of water, head tipped back. Damian feels vicious glee at the little blemish of teeth under his rumpled collar. His mouth is wet and gleams pink under the lights and Damian thinks of how he looked sinking to one knee.

Grayson sets down the bottle just in time to catch Damian staring. His gaze has to be incriminating because Grayson’s grin returns in full wattage. Damian returns it with a scowl.

It’s a restless crowd that Grayson pushes through to get to Damian. Bending so his mouth’s close enough to his ear to hear over the chatter that fills the gym, Grayson says, “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

Damian opens his mouth to rejoin when the DJ booms, “Now what you’ve all been waiting for--grab your date because it’s time for the slow dance…”

Grayson looks at him. Cocks his head, bites his lip. Warm palm sliding to Damian’s wrist.

“No,” Damian says immediately. Grayson’s already pulling him along into the center of the floor. “Grays--Ian--” His heart feels like it’ll make a leap for it out of his chest as Grayson drags him close. The dark fall of his hair into bright eyes makes every protest dry up in Damian’s mouth.

“This song has to be older than you,” Grayson comments airily while Damian freezes mutely in his arms.

People are staring. Of course they are.

Two men dancing in the middle of a Midwestern high school while the Goo Goo Dolls play over the speakers must be a spectacle.

They’ve done brasher things. Braver things.

And yet nothing he’s done in his life has felt quite as bold as reaching up and twining his arms around Grayson’s neck. 

His tongue lies thick in his mouth. _You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted,_ Damian wants to cry out at him. _I want to run before you do._

They've both had classical training and this is nothing like that, just an embrace made into motion. Grayson’s humming, low as a river, along with the words.

Damian shoots him a glare and swallows down the swell of emotion.

“Hey, ‘Iris’ is romantic,” Grayson objects.

“I’ll show you romantic,” Damian snaps at him without thinking.

“You know, your comebacks have lost some of their bite over the years,” Grayson tells him with distinct amusement. 

“There’s a Qabbani poem,” Damian tells Grayson’s chest as they sway as one. His leg drags some and Grayson slides them into a gentler circle. “It starts, ah. With the lover asking a question. ‘What’s the difference between me and the sky?’”

Prompting, Grayson nudges him. “So? What’s the difference?”

Damian loses his nerve. “It’s a trick question.” He wrinkles his nose. “Nothing, you’re both full of clouds.”

Grayson sputters a laugh into the side of Damian’s neck _(when you laugh)_ , breath silk on his skin _(I forget the sky)._

“Damian,” Grayson says heavily as the song winds down. He hates that tone in his voice so much that he can’t even remember to correct him to Thomas. It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore anyway. “You know I have to go back to Gotham soon.”

Damian does know. And that’s all he had been hoping for, that Grayson would piss off and leave him to his recovery and his revenge. 

But after what happened between them, what he never thought would happen in a hundred lifetimes, he doesn’t want to let him go back. Let him return to the real world where the thought of them together is a dream that vanishes like fog in the light of day.

“Gotham needs you,” he chooses to tell his collarbone where it peeks out from under his shirt, love-bruised. There it is, evidence in blood. 

“Damian. Look at me.”

Whatever Grayson says now, it won’t be a dream that he dashes to pieces. It will be a _reality_ that he locks away as deep as they all lock away the realities they can’t swallow. 

Grayson lifts his chin and he looks up against his will.

 _You can’t take it with you,_ he thinks, but the memory of that one morning, he can carry with him as long as he walks the night. Grayson can let go of him as easily as he’s let go of anyone or anything, but Damian can hold on for as much of forever as he’s given.

“ _I_ need you.”

The music ends and they don’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to homophobia and some more references to mortality.
> 
> In the language of flowers, hyacinth means "forgive me" (not to mention it's named for half of a mythological gay couple, haha, though Dick and Damian do get a happier ending than them).
> 
> The songs that play at the dance are "Cupid Shuffle" by Cupid and "Iris" by Goo Goo Dolls. 
> 
> Damian references this Nizar Qabbani poem (in translation):
> 
> _My lover asks me:_  
>  "What is the difference between me and the sky?"  
> The difference, my love,  
> is that when you laugh,  
> I forget the sky.
> 
> Everything about conceiving and creating this fic has been off the wall. I hope you had at least a fraction of the fun reading it as I did writing it!


End file.
